Westerns Books

The Western Garden Book Western Garden Book (Sunset Western Garden Book)is THE standard reference work for gardening from California to the Pacific Northwest, the desert Southwest up to western Montana. Includes descriptions and scientific names for plants that will grow in various climate zones. Plant descriptions include growing conditions, when to prune, and dealing responsibly with diseases and insect pests. It has been produced for over 40 years with many editions. Used editions are still good. Get a new one every ten years or so if you are a serious gardener. Makes great holiday/birthday gift for the new homeowner in the West.

A good reference book to replace my 40th Anniversary edition (1998) hoping to get more information on draught tolerant landscape (not much more than the 40th edition). What's missing though is the Index with scientific and common names. My 1998 edition had a 12 page index the new one has 3 pages. All in all, I like the old one better.

As Master Gardeners my wife and I are often asked questions, and while we have a lot of gardening books, this is the book that most often answers our questions.

This book has been a mainstay of gardening information for many years. There have been positive changes/updates through the years and it is a great reference.

My latest obsessive interest is gardening, specifically vegetable & fruit gardening. So I've been in info-gathering mode: going to the library to scope out books, obsessively cross-referencing blurbs about the same plant across 5-10 books at a time, being some of the things I've done. So I'm drowning in a sea of gardening books as I write this.

This is a book that I would not buy for substantive gardening because it does not measure up to what else is available. Many of the blurbs are less substantive than a seed envelope. I looked at it because of Amazon's high ratings, but here's why I think this book is an unwise investment for that purpose:

1) It's hard to read. For most of the plants listed, the header is accompanied by a single tiny (~1inch size) representative pastel-colored illustration followed by 1-10 short paragraphs of generic text. I'm only in my 20s and I feel like I have to crack out reading glasses.

2) The meat of the book is like a dictionary, alphabetically listed by scientific name or common name. To find something, you have to thumb through pages of tiny print with nothing to grab your attention. It's boring, having neither anecdotes (if you like those) nor the utility of bullets. Too bad Sunset magazine didn't include some of their big, eye-popping, full-page colorful photo spreads.

3) And like a dictionary, the blurbs are short and generic. For all the bountiful garden greens available in California & along the west coast, there is a 7 paragraph generic description of "lettuce". The strains are mentioned not to describe their look or taste, but to just list their names so they've been covered. Some of the fruits and trees are accompanined by tables, so their descriptions are better.

4) This book tries to have the scope of American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening while being the local expert, but falls very very short because it is not detailed enough and also passes the buck. True, there's a huge list of plants, but it's more like a cheap catalog with generic, cursory tips and zero visual stimulation. The worst is the passing of the responsibility. For example: (a small blurb on tomato problems) "If certain diseases or nematodes cause trouble locally, you may be able to grow varieties that resist one or more problems. Keys to resistance you may see on plant labels or in catalog descriptions..." Thanks. My all-in-one West Coast compendium tells me to look for local info in other resources.

5) With such generic, short descriptions, you'd think there'd be plenty of space on the page. But the margins are about 1/2 inch, so if you plan on jotting down notes, crack out your reading glasses.

6) There's almost zero visualization because not only are there so few pictures, a lot of times the strains are not even described, merely mentioned by name only. There is a short chapter in the beginning with 1-2inch color photos, but it is organized by scientific name. It wasn't useful because I didn't know the scientific names of strains I was trying to learn about. The seed catalogs that I've gotten from online companies do a much better job.

7) Because I was impressed by how bad I thought this book was (given it's high ratings), I checked the library for older editions to see how it had "improved" over time. Unfortunately, they only had the 7th ed and it was same as the 8th, minus different cover art.


For better, encyclopedia-like gardening books that have gorgeous color photos and insightful, detailed writing, try:
American Horticultural Society A to Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants and The American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers (American Horticultural Society Practical Guides) and American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening
-- has it all including photos and sequential drawings when plants need specific instructions. Fat, heavy books (You may pull a muscle, but together, these are the books that comprise a full reference.)

New Illustrated Guide to Gardening
-- succeeds where Western Garden fails; big coffee-table photos with substantive, practical writing; not as heavy cause it doesn't list everything like the book above, but it comes close

The Random House Book of Vegetables (Random House Garden)
-- I put this one in because in an ideal world, I want to see pictures of the varieties alongside good text in an all-inclusive gardening compendium. If anyone knows of any current book like this, please let me know! Thanks!

Professor West's translations here are the standard translations for those who know, which is to say those who believe interpretation is fundamentally dependent upon exactly which words Plato chose to use. This should simply be a given, but there are too many who believe loose interpretations which border slang are able to provide one with a sound understanding of Plato's insight (dido for Aristophanes). My primary interest in posting this review, however, is to counter the reviewer who gave this book one star and proceeded at great length to skewer the translation and translator. I don't make it a habit of responding to such patently flawed reviews, but I make an exception in this case because of how grossly inaccurate the reviewer is on virtually all counts. In short, I find his review offensive to academic integrity and intellectual honesty. Quite simply, the man is a charlatan, wishing to pick a fight with a man who is by far his intellectual superior. It is lamentable that such incompetence can so easily be posted on these public domains.

This is a real rarity in Platonic scholarship--a synoptic translation of four important works on the life of Socrates; in other words, the translators use the same English words to convey the same important Greek terms in each of their translations in order to aid the reader in recognizing how those terms evolve in meaning and shape the drama of each of the works, or in short, in recognizing the dialogue which exists between the works rather than merely within them. A former reviewer seems to have missed the point of this work: if you want someone to TELL YOU WHAT PLATO MEANS, you can read a two line summary in an encyclopedia, but if you want to find out why Plato went and wrote an entire dialogue rather than a two line summary, you have to pay close attention to what he actually says. These translations are about as close as you can get without having advanced knowledge of Greek, and even then, the Wests note specific usages of key terms which even a native speaker of ancient Greek might not have noticed on a first reading, and which are largely ignored by the scholarly community. This is an ideal translation for students of politics, history, philosophy, and classical literature who want to know why the most profound and poetic civilization of antiquity put the first philosopher to death, and why he let them.

Never in my life have I been so outraged by what I have read as by the drivel spouted by Dr. West in this book (in his Translator's Note), and by the use of `unponderingly' and "the Thinkery" (among other things) in his translation of The Clouds. I also read his translation of Plato's Apology of Socrates, and found it grossly inferior to Jowett.

Four Texts on Socrates is not a book to be tossed aside lightly: it should be hurled with great force. (Apologies to Dorothy Parker.)

Not only are the translations themselves inexcusably inept, almost everything that he writes in his Translator's Note is wrong.

"The Clouds" is a play, not a scientific or mathematical treatise. As such, it has characters and dialogue. A 'modern' translation of a play must be something that could be presented on a stage and make sense to a 'modern' audience. If a character is supposed to be bizarre or out of the ordinary, one does not make him spout drivel such as 'unponderingly'; one gives him a 'shtick', which is a theatrical term. It's more or less a running gag associated with a particular character. You create, through clever ways of speaking or odd ways of stringing his words together, a characterization. He could be made to speak like a parody of William F. Buckley or the Star Wars character Yoda. As it stands, West's text cannot be presented as a play.

It is neither necessary nor useful to coin such nonsense as 'unponderingly'; indeed, it is inexcusable. It conveys neither humor nor cleverness. It comes off simply as stupid. The translator of a play must know something about theatre and drawing characters, which Dr. West obviously does not. To state it bluntly: The translation of plays should be left to people who understand theatre and characterization, and who are creative. Dr. West doesn't have a creative bone in his body.

In regard to his translation of Plato's The Apology of Socrates, the translation by Dr. West is both original and good, but the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good. After all, when one has the work of such a brilliant predecessor as Benjamin Jowett to follow, the temptation to do something entirely different is strong. But it must be resisted. If Dr. West had merely lightly revised Jowett's great work, he would have made a contribution to learning. Alas, he did neither.

The version by Jowett is clearly superior. Here is a short excerpt:

"And I must beg of you to grant me a favor: If I defend myself in my accustomed manner, and you hear me using the words which I have been in the habit of using in the agora, at the tables of the money-changers, or anywhere else, I would ask you not to be surprised, and not to interrupt me on this account. For I am more than seventy years of age, and appearing now for the first time in a court of law, I am quite a stranger to the language of the place; and therefore I would have you regard me as if I were really a stranger, whom you would accuse if he spoke in his native tongue, and after the fashion of his country: Am I making an unfair request of you? Never mind the manner, which may or may not be good; but think only of the truth of my words, and give heed to that: let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly."

Compare West's inept version:

"...I do very much beg and beseech this of you: if you hear me speaking in my defense with the same speeches I am accustomed to speak both in the marketplace at the money-tables, where many of you have heard me, and elsewhere, do not wonder or make a disturbance because of this. For this is how it is: now is the first time I have come before a law court, at the age of seventy; hence I am simply foreign to the manner of speech here. So just as, if I really did happen to be a foreigner, you would surely sympathize with me if I spoke in the dialect and way in which I was raised, so also I do beg of you now (and it is just, at least, as it seems to me): leave aside the manner of my speech--for perhaps it may be worse, but perhaps better--and instead consider this very thing and apply your mind to this: whether the things I say are just or not. For this is the virtue of a judge, while that of an orator is to speak the truth."

"Speaking...with the same speeches I am accustomed to speak"? How utterly inept and repetitive! Didn't he even proof-read? One doesn't speak with 'speeches', one speaks with words!

It is obvious that Dr. West never read his version aloud as a test of its appropriateness, which is surprising, because this work is supposed to be a speech. Dr. West's version is clearly not suited to speaking aloud, whereas Jowett's is. In West's translation, Socrates is a clumsy, repetitive, and inept speaker. Needlessly so. If you want to read a good translation, see Jowett's 3rd edition (1892).

Why does Dr. West believe himself qualified to make translations? Nothing in his work suggests that he is competent in any way to do so. This is not the work of a scholar, but that of a bungling hack. These translations are travesties. How does work this nauseatingly bad get published?

NOT RECOMMENDED

Thomas and Grace West translate Plato's Euthyphro, Apology and Crito and Aristophanes' Clouds in a clear and modern fashion. The useful background information and clear footnotes help make this an important book to have if you want to read about Socrates. This book is a "must have" for any Socrates fan indeed!

This is an outstanding translation of these Greek texts. These are texts that many of us regularly teach in introductory classes, and it is a great help to have such a reliable translation: the translation is clear and accessible, but maintains an unusually strict adherence to the form of the original Greek. This makes it useful for advanced study as well. The running footnotes to the text are especially helpful for giving students the relevant points of historical and legal context for understanding Socrates's position, but they are sparse enough that they do not intrude in the interpretation of the text. This is the only translation of these texts that I will use in my courses.

"Organization Theory and Design" is a book every corporate member that has aspirations to better understand and contribute to his organization should own.

I used this book studying a basic course of organizational behavior after the professor had referred to it as "the best text on the market". I found out he was right - the book is extremely well-written and its contribution to my understanding of the subject is invaluable.

As it happened, I partly read older versions of the book to find out how every few years Mr. Daft updates his analysis, insights and examples of the ever changing and evolving world of organizations; for instance, the past example of IBM that served as the major opening example of an organization that has gone from the top of the world to the brink of disintegration in the beginning of the 90's (and since then regained leading position in its areas of expertise), is replaced in this 8th edition with Xerox. Mr. Daft continues and presents the most recent developments in organizations' design - structures and management methods that have only emerged lately in response to the turbulences in the environments and competition worldwide.

By making the changes and improvements in every edition "Organization theory and design" wins the title of this review - "the learning book" - that mirror images the main theme of this work - "the learning organization". Almost no organization can stand still in today's reality - managers and workers have to constantly think of better ways of doing things and learn from every source that bears knowledge and can give the organization a better competitive advantage. Things have never moved so fast and threats and opportunities have never been so immense. Competitors have to be efficient and different to survive and stay on the top.

The structure of the book is designed to convey its ideas in the best possible manner: Each and every chapter opens with an example illustrating its content, then an introduction to the subject. Theory and examples from today's organizational world followa and are interwoven throughout the text in the "in practice" section. A fascinating section is "leading by design" in which Mr. Daft highlights top-of-the-line companies that have managed to materialize the theory and consequently lead their industries. Yet another remarkable feature is "bookmark" in which the autohor recommends and actually reviews the content of other books that further develop the subject the chapter dealt with. For me, the magnitude of this behavior is unprecedented; I haven't read a book that is so much interested in advancing and advertising works of fellow authors. This is a code of conduct every author can learn from in pursuing the ultimate goal - to better inform and educate his/her readers.

Some of the material the book covers include the organizational environment, organizational structures, organizational decision making processes, ethics, organization-decline and organizational politics.

As is the norm in many books, Mr. Daft integrates case studies directly connected to the content of each chapter in its end. They add all the more to the reality dimension that is so strong throughout the book.

Lastly, the price of this book is somewhat expensive but well worth the money and will certainly prove to be a wise investment. Years after its reaing and studying it may serve as a reference source when the reader will stumble across situations covered in the book and learn to appreciate even more the lessons insights Mr. daft offers.

I bought this book with the apprehension that it might not be the same one I'm looking for.But Amazon made me feel so satisfied.I got the exact book and that too new and in much lower price than the market.

This is a well-designed and comprehensive book in the area of organization theory. From introduction to the end, this book aims to teach the foundations of organization theory to readers.

There is a great awareness of new developments in the area of organization theory. The new developments such as team-based management models are integrated into the conventional wisdom wonderfully in the book. We are living in a world in which globalization and stiff competition dominates. We name this age as Information Age and corporations need new mentality and practices to adapt to challenging conditions this era brings about. This book presents some new approaches in global competition perspective to readers.

A Look Inside, Bookmark, In Practice, The New Paradigm and Case for Analysis are excellent peculiarities of the book.

Diagrams and other visual characterizations involved in the book give readers a big opportunity to digest topics recounted. Since this book is a detailed investigation of organization theory, you may miss some parts and feel confused. I can recommend another book, that is, Designing Organizations (Robey, D. and Sales, Carol A.), which is a summarized organization theory book with excellent cases.

If you want to understand organization theory with its basic foundations and details, this book is a must. You must exploit the rich knowledge of Professor Daft.

Strongly recommended.

Daft out did himself in this edition of his text. He includes book reviews and company profiles throughout each chapter to illustrate the theories he's describing. I read this for an MA course and found it easy to learn from. I'm even putting the information into practice at work! Not all textbooks are that helpful. *grin*

Application of organization design about Team-Based Structures and The boundaryless Organization.

It's a textbook. That being said, it is filled with extra material, like case examples, a CD-ROM, etc. I didn't look at any of that because my business law class went at such a slow pace we only looked at about 10 of the chapters. If you are buying this for a class, you should come away with a lot of good information from this book without feeling it is too much of a boring chore to read through.

Very fast delivery, thanks I was in a hurry and you have made me very happy.

This is an excellent text at various levels of interest, desire, talent and time. The text is arranged that given the time, the Instructor can dig deeper and deeper into thorny topics. Additionally, curious students can rely on numerous web sources for enhanced views and greater depth.

Further, there are additional sources for the Instructor available through test banks and outlines. This is my favorite text to teach from. It is neither dry with enough cases to stir the imagination of the younger students nor MTV'd and contains sufficient current cases to give older students and retired students pause to consider. 5 stars. Larry Scantlebury

This is an excellent text. It incorporates the law, as well as
legal research methodologies. For instance, a standard chapter
contains an outline, common law sources,constitutional,
statutory and administrative laws/rule-making. The work cites
computerized legal research in WESTLAW and LEXIS. Relevant
international legal citations are listed. The applicable
United States Code is cited by Title and specific paragraph.
In some cases, individual state legal codes are cited. There
are exhaustic sets of historical and statutory notes, cross
references and federal practice notes. Each chapter has a
comprehensive case study with a brief synopsis, cited case
and final disposition. There are teaching suggestions at the
end of the instructor's manual together with discussion
questions, research assignments and an explanation of footnotes.
In addition, there is an exhaustive section on essay question
answers.

Here is a model answer:
Stare decisis is a doctrine that prescribes following earlier
judicial decisions in deciding a current case if the facts and
questions are similar. Courts attempt to be consistent with their
own prior decisions and with the decisions of courts superior
to them. Stare decisis is important because part of the function
of law is to maintain stability. If the application of the law
was unpredictable, there would be no consistent rules to follow
and no stability.

The volume has detailed coverage of the following areas:
o Business Ethics o Int'l Business Law
o Employee Rights o Employment law
o Occupational safety o Accounting and the law
o Securities o Mergers and acquisitions
o Insurance o Real Estate
o Financial institutions o Unfair competition
o Advertising o Environmental law
o Health Care o Sports and entertainment
o Hospitality management o Communications
o Government contracts o Legal representation of business

There are significant software support systems; namely,
o Legal Clerk Research Software System
o Computerized Instructor's Manual
o Computerized Questions/Answers
o Case problems on diskette
o CD
o Lecture Builder Software
o Westest
o A Classroom Management System
o WESTrain
o Transparency Masters
o Sample Moot Court and much much more

This text is an excellent purchase for collegiate law students.

I am using this textbook in several of my classes, and let me just say- it has everything I could have hoped for. The chapters are laid out well, many cases are cited, and the student is given actual cases to figure out, with the citations given at the end so he can find the actual outcome. I've found this to be among the best textbooks. It is so good, in fact that I've reccomended it to several of my friends who are going into business for themselves. This covers nearly everything they'll need to know regarding contracts, secured transactions, warranties, etc.
Love the law!

Griffin's text is well written and easy to follow. It is extremely thorough--that is, he provides details and examples that help exemplify the material. Many of my classes require poorly written textbooks that are unclear or jump all over the place, but Griffin's text is effectivly organized. Although it's expensive, as most are today, this is by far one of the best textbooks I've owned. If your professor doesn't explain things thoroughly, you'll probably still learn all you need to learn about management essentials through this text.

I bought this book through the marketplace thinking I was purchasing the text book. Wrong! The description needs to be updated to indicate this is a study guide workbook. The text is over [$$$] new.

I doubted the content of the book at first thinking it'll just tell of normal business laws. But after the first chapter, I found this book actually being helpful in providing examples of cases that actually happened and how the business laws were applied. Even for normal reading, the book is surely interesting.

hi i bought 2 books from these people for the first time in the past two weeks and i got the book on time and it was in great condition!
thanks

First of all I paid for 2 days express shipping. The book came after 5 days.Then I did not get your guide to an A which is a free pakage that comes with a new book.The point of buying a new book was just because of this pakage.I am not very satisfied with the service.

Best book so far for teahing accounting. This is the book for learning accounting.

My accounting professor was awful and it was this book that saved my grade in the class. It provides very detailed explanations and summaries of each concept it covers throughout the chapter, not just at the end of the section. The accompanying working papers and study guide were also very informative and helpful.

One of the dryest books I've ever had to read. "Real world" examples are far-fetched and worthless in my opinion. They just add more pages to the book. The writers use some type of fancy style rather than straight-forward English, which adds to the confusion while trying to understand the material.

Bottom line: What can be said in 3 pages takes 20 pages in this book. Do authors get paid by the page today? The 800+ page book should be no more than 300 pages in my opinion, and it would still get the same point across.

It may not be the best textbook in the world but its not the worst. Actually, I can't find anything wrong with it except for the coffee stain I left while studying.

The text comes with a CD that contains Excel worksheets described in the book. Regardless of whether examples in the book are relevant to everyday life, they explain the situation.

Minus one star for not having a study guide to go along with it. Thats all, other than that... decent book.

The examples of these book are not in synch with real life. Much of it is a vague attempt of creative writing.

I had to use this text for a sophmore level management science course. While the book is extensively detailed, it is written for graduate school level course work. The program that comes with the text is much more useful for the undergrad student tackling business statistics.

This book is an essential guide for every graduate student. It makes mathematical and technical concepts of management science understandable and useful.

The foundation of consequentialist ethical theory, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism is a must read for anybody who wants to understand ethical theory. While we may debate what makes action right or wrong, Mill's take is one that must be acknowledged.

One of the Classical School economists explains and defends a system of ethics that counted among its adherents Ludwig von Mises, one of the great Austrian School economists and philosophers.
Utilitarianism, in John Stuart Mill's day and our own, periodically comes under attack from the spokesmen of organized religion. But Mill holds that his philosophy is completely compatible with religious morals. Mill even writes that the founder of Christianity was a utilitarian. Makes sense when we realize that one of the main features of the early Christians was jettisoning Judaism commandments that seem to have no obvious utility (usefulness). That attitude lead them to eventually discard the entire Torah.
Mill imbibed Utilitarianism from his father -- British East India Co. executive and writer James Mill -- and their friend Jeremy Bentham. The two tablets of Utilitarianism are pleasure (acquisition of) and pain (avoidance of). Reduced to one it is the "greatest happiness principle." Mill argues persuasively that these things are more hard-wired into humans than almost everything else. The pursuit of virtue, which some in organized religion see as being at odds with Utilitarianism, is actually a form of the pursuit of happiness for the virtue-seeker, those around him/her, and/or future generations. This adds to the "public good," which is at the peak of Mill's values pyramid.
Utilitarian concepts are all over America's founding documents, especially the Constitution. Interestingly, and ironically, Mill's essay was published at the time of the Constitution's greatest crisis -- the Civil War (1863). Mill makes no mention of the crisis or America's earlier successful marriage of Utilitarianism and federalism/limited government.
Mill's "public good" and the U.S. Constitution's "general welfare" clauses helped open the gates to big government, Ayn Rand and other individual rights advocates point out. Sad but true. Although his ideas contain seeds for the modern welfare state, Mill meant his public good to be best achieved by free-acting individuals getting little or no prompting from government.
How does the individualized commandment of "love thy neighbor as thyself" get turned into the collectivist Social Security Administration? Perhaps the psychiatric profession can explain it. I can't.

Many of the posted reviews refer to a different version of the text (i.e. Crisp vice Sher)

Sher's version is an inexpensive and accessible (good font size and binding) edition of this classic. It contains the 3 essays (unabridged) use to construct Utilitarianism as well as a speech given by Mill while serving as a British MP in 1868 on capital punishment. Readers should note that aside from a short introduction by George Sher, this edition does not contain any additional analysis. Readers looking for a more detailed discussion will need to look elsewhere. Judging from some of the other reviews it sounds as if Crisp's version may be worthwhile.

I read this book for a graduate Mill seminar in Philosophy. Recommended reading for anyone interested in philosophy, political science, and history.

John Stuart Mill, 1806-73, worked for the East India Co. helped run Colonial India from England. Minister of Parliament 1865-68 he served one term.

Mill develops a theory of morality in Utilitarianism. He argues against the group of people who think that morality is intuitive. Intuitionists think that God put morality in us, thus, morality is a priori. Moral rules or principles were programmed in us, we can see these rules, they are binding, however they do acknowledge that on a case by case basis we still need to use them to reason out the ultimate answer for a particular case.

Mill also believes that there are a set of moral principles that we ought to be thinking about. Intuitionists today think that case by case we can reason out what is right or wrong. However, they would be suspicious that of believing there were general moral principles. Intuitionists say it is not up to us to investigate what is right or wrong. Mill would disagree. Mill doesn't like Intuitionists theory because they can't prove their view; and they can't explain why "lying is wrong" as an example. In addition, they do not provide a list of these innate morals we are suppose to have, and they do not have a hierarchy for them to resolve the conflict between two morals when they arise.

Background on essay, written in 1861 came out in 3 magazine articles, pretty scanty which sometimes drives one crazy trying to deduce what Mill is saying. A lot of interpretation is necessary.

Chapter 2: The second paragraph is official statement of the theory.

"The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness."

Happiness=pleasure and freedom from pain. This makes him a Hedonist philosophically.


Higher Pleasures Doctrine- Jeremy Bentham says how valuable pleasure was based on 2 dimensions that we evaluate our experience of pleasure by, intensity and duration. Bentham says this determines quantity in pleasure. Bentham said this determined how much a given experience adds to a person's happiness.

Mill adds a third value to evaluate pleasure by and that's its quality, how good it is. Many don't understand Mill's idea that pleasure has value and quality. Most people think that Mill is really talking about quantity, or they don't believe one can be a hedonist, that pleasure is the only thing that has value, and yet think that there is something more to judging how valuable an experience is than the intensity and the duration of the pleasure it contains. So, they say that one of two things must be going on here. Of course, some people are sure it is one thing, and some are sure it is another. Either what Mill is talking about when you get right down to it is quantity in pleasure and different experiences, or all the different things he says about quality can be somehow resolved into quantity. So that really what is going on is that when Mill talks about a pleasure being of a higher quality that just means that there is a lot more pleasure there that the quantity is much greater. Or, Mill is giving up on hedonism at this point and he is admitting that some things are valuable aside from pleasure. So, when he says an experience like reading a good book or something like that is more valuable than an experience of some kind of animalistic pleasure, that really what he is saying is this experience is more valuable for reasons that go beyond the amount of pleasure involved. In addition to how much pleasure is involved there is also that maybe the experience is more beautiful or more noble or something like that and this gives it additional value. So something other than the amount of pleasure involved gives it additional value. Mill can be a consistent hedonist and he can consistently say that pleasure is the only thing that can have value and yet it is still the case that some pleasures are just more valuable than other pleasures.

'Utilitarianism' by 19th Century English social philosopher, John Stuart Mill is the classic statement of a theory of ethics which is bases its argument primarily on the question of 'What is Good' instead of questions of obligation on which many other classic theories are based.

Today, Mill's theory and Utilitarianism in general fall under the shadow of an equally famous work by English philosopher, G. E. Moore, the great analytical work 'Principia Ethica'.

Utilitarianism is based on determining what is good by what provides the greatest pleasure for the greatest number of people. All by itself, this theory leaves itself open to all sorts of difficult questions about whether great good for a large number of people is worth the suffering of a single individual and all sorts of variations on this theme.

Moore's argument is simply that these problems simply point up the fact that what is moral cannot be reduced to statements of fact, such as the amount of pleasure received by a number of people.

Oddly enough, Moore did not kill Utilitarianism. That is why Mill's work is still studied today. Unlike scientific theories, philosophical theories, being different ways of looking at the world, never entirely loose their insights, even some of the most absurd sounding notions such as Bishop Berkeley's solipsism.

Like Kant's short 'Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals', the greatest virtue of this book is that it is a classic statement of an important position by it's most famous proponent in a relatively short work.

It is not easy reading, but it's length means one can read and analyze it within the course of a week, which is why professors still assign it.

A very important work.